


i love you

by goodmorninglou



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Era, Love Confessions, M/M, Songfic, i love you by Billie Eilish, it was supposed to have a sad ending but it was literally impossible for me to write that, javid - Freeform, this is intense angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 09:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20598245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorninglou/pseuds/goodmorninglou
Summary: a javid songfici love you—billie eilish





	i love you

**Author's Note:**

> hey y’all  
im angsty and emotional so have this!!  
jesus i need sleep  
hope y’all enjoy!!

_It’s not true_

_Tell me I’ve been lied to_

They’re sitting in the penthouse in the heavy, sticky New York air, arms and legs twined together like some sort of curling puzzle piece. The sun is ephemeral, disappearing over the horizon and casting diaphanous red rays across Jack’s face, Davey’s hands. It’s breathtaking, to say the least of it.  Jack is breathtaking.

“I want to paint you.” Jack whispers, fingers dancing down the side of Davey’s face, scarlet from the vanishing daylight.

Davey raises one brow, smirking slightly. “Do you?”

Jack nods and kisses one of Davey’s eyelids, no more than a brush of skin across skin. “I don’t think I could, though.”

“Why’s that?” Davey shifts beneath his lover, enraptured in the red halo that surrounds his body, that makes his green eyes multi-faceted like a kaleidoscope.

Their noses bump together softly. “You’re too beautiful.”

Davey grins, feels his heart swell, wraps his arms around Jack’s torso. “I love you.” He murmured easily, shutting his eyes.

Jack freezes above him.

Untangles their arms and legs.

Leaves Davey cold and scared and heartbroken as he sits back on the roof, shaking his head. Jack’s face has always been painfully aspectabund, but Davey can read each dimension of his emotions as they cross his face now, so raw that he has to look away.

“No.” Jack says plainly, and Davey shuts his eyes.

_Crying isn’t like you_

_What the hell did I do?_

There’s tears in his eyes now, tears he’s never wanted to shed around Jack and much less because of Jack. His entire body hurts, and his ears are ringing like his head had been smashed over and over again, against some harsh patch of pavement. Jack is sitting with his knees halfway up to his chest, head bowed, hands gripping his hair in his fists. The distance between them feels pronounced and unbreachable, a chasm with no bridge to cross it.

“No.” He repeats, and Davey feels a tear slip down his cheek. “Don’t cry, Davey.”

Davey turns his face to the sliver of red sunlight that he’d found so orphic just moments before. “I’m not.” He chokes.

A shuffle, a presence at his back. “You are.”

Davey presses his lips together until they’re white. He can smell Jack now, newspaper and night air and the peppermints Medda always gives the two of them. It whelves an unbearable, sharp spike beneath his ribs, makes him gasp for oxygen just to have some semblance of breath.

Davey said nothing, and Jack repeated quietly, “You are.”

_Never been the type to_

_Let someone see right through_

“I’m sorry.” Davey whispers finally, when the last of the daylight slips through their fingers like sand in an hourglass.

Jack reaches out to touch his face, softly. “We can’t do that. You know we can’t.”

“I already do.”

“It’s against the law.” Jack whispers.

Davey wishes he could be angry, but all he feels is unending despondency. “Since when do you care about the law?”

Jack manages a weak, sad smile. “Since it involves you getting hurt if it’s broken.”

“I don’t care about that.” Davey reaches out to grab Jack’s hand and hold it to his pounding heart, pressed against his chest. “You shouldn’t either.” He watches Jack’s face stay fixed in that grieved, breaking smile. “But you won’t stop, will you?”

Jack catches a strand of Davey’s hair that shifts in the wind and cocks his head to one side gently. “You know me too well.” He murmured.

Davey shook his head and caught Jack’s hand, threading their fingers together. “No,” he whispers, and looks up through his lashes. “Apparently I don’t.”

_Maybe won’t you take it back_

_Say you were tryna make me laugh_

_And nothing has to change today_

_You didn’t mean to say “I love you”_

“You could take it back.” Jack whispers. Only their hands touch between them, and it feels foreign, bizarre. There hasn’t been a day where they haven’t been tangled together like vines, all hands and legs and lips. This distance feels erroneous. Like all warmth disappeared with the setting sun.

Davey looks at him and pretends his heart isn’t shattering. “We’d both know.” He whispers.

“I don’t want everything to change.” Jack whispers desperately, his voice cracking.

Davey looks down at their joint hands and runs the pad of his thumb across Jack’s scarred, paint-splattered knuckles. “I thought it had been for a while.”

“Say you were just trying to make me smile. Tell me that.” Jack pleads.

Davey takes a shuddering breath. “I was only trying to make you smile.”

But Jack knows that’s not true. And Davey does too. You can’t retrieve things floating in the air when they’ve already been set free and disappeared on the breeze.

Jack untangles their hands.

_I love you_

_And I don’t want to_

Davey wishes he could turn back time, or jump forward in it. He wishes he could return to a moment when he and Jack were good and just freeze it, leave them cocooned in their illusion of eternal joy even if it is illicit. He wishes he could be a kid again, who hadn’t blurted “I love you” and ruined everything that he’d ever desired.

Jack sits quietly across from him, no part of them touching. Their eyes are locked in some interminable battle. “What do we do now?” Jack whispered.

Davey shrugged, shifted until his knee accidentally brushed against Jack’s, pretended not to feel his stomach twist when Jack moved away from the touch. “I don’t know.” He whispered back. Speaking any louder felt like breaking some unspoken rule between them.

“I don’t want us to be over.” 

Davey shut his eyes. “Just being together in dangerous enough, but you don’t care about that?” 

“Of course I care.” Jack looked like he wanted to reach out, but couldn’t bridge the gap he’d forged. “But I can’t  not be with you. It’s the one thing in life that I can’t do. I need you.”

“I need you too.” Davey exhaled. He opened his mouth as if to say something else but found there was nothing to say, no adequate language to capture the sorrow wracking through his soul.

Jack loved him, Davey knew that.

He just didn’t know if Jack meant to.

_Up all night_

_On another red eye_

Davey stared up at the stars, feeling Jack’s thumb sweep persistently across the back of his hand. He wasn’t sure when they’d laid down beside each other, or when his hand had ended up in Jack’s. But there they were.

“Do you think we knew each other in a past life?” Davey whispered, leaning his head on Jack’s shoulder.

He felt Jack nod. “I know you, I knew you when we met.” He took a breath. “I understand you too well not to have known you before.”

Davey sat up to hide the desolation flitting across his face. “Will we ever be happy, Jack?”

Jack’s hand ran along his spine, softly. “I’m sorry.”

Davey’s eyes tilted to the empyrean sky and he leaned back into Jack’s body, feeling tears pool in his eyes when Jack’s arms came around his torso, chin resting on his shoulder.

“Don’t go to sleep.” Davey murmured slowly, his hands overlapping Jack’s.

“Okay.”

_I wish we never learned to fly_

_Maybe we should just try_

Davey was running, catapulting himself down the streets, further and further from Jack with each moment that passes. It’s funny, in some demented way, since Jack is the one who really taught him how to run. Through alleyways, down sidewalks, just running and running with no destination and no break. With the wind whipping his face and lungs burning, he feels like he’s flying.

It hurts. It hurts because he can’t forget it, can’t stop seeing the expression on Jack’s face, the painful synthesis of desperation and melancholia. It flashes behind his eyelids like a strike of lightning, hot and searing.

Couldn’t they have at least tried? Pretended that it might have worked out? Jack loves him, he knows that, but knowing is worse somehow. 

Davey wishes Jack never taught him how to run.

He can’t stop, now.

_To tell ourselves a good lie_

_I didn’t mean to make you cry_

He stumbles to a stop somewhere in between buildings, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. His breathing is ragged, tearing harshly through his lungs.

He knows Jack hadn’t meant for him to cry. He hadn’t wanted to cry, had tried desperately not to. He just couldn’t stop himself. It had hurt so bad, like a hot spike shoved between his ribs.

Davey should’ve lied. Should’ve shut his ever-moving mouth and kept kissing Jack until the sun rose. Now Jack is miles away, on a rooftop decidedly not missing him and Davey just feels mortal. Which is a stupid thing to feel when you are, but Jack made him feel like a deity. Like they were untouchable together. Now he’s doubled over in some nameless alleyway, out of breath and panting, eyes squeezed shut.

Jack doesn’t want to love him.

He leans over and throws up.

_Maybe won’t you take it back_

_Say you were tryna make me laugh_

_And nothing has to change today_

_You didn’t mean to say “I love you”_

He’s not sure when Jack finds him, sitting up against the wall of the alley, his eyes shut and head tipped back on the bricks.

“Why did you leave?” Jack whispers, daring to take one of Davey’s hands. It must be two in the morning, now—everyone who could get them in trouble is long past asleep.

“Because.” Davey says plainly. “Because why wouldn’t I?”

“It was an accident.” Jack whispers, as if that will make it any less true. “You didn’t mean to say it, nothing has to change.”

Davey raises his face to the cold shine of the stars. “Would it be so bad if I had meant to say it? Why shouldn’t I?”

Jack takes a shuddering breath. “Because I don’t want us to start thinking we’re untouchable. Being together is good, yeah, but telling the world about other things and not getting caught makes us overconfident. We start to think we can get away with more things, dangerous things. We’re kissing in alleyways and holding hands beneath tables and the next thing you know you’re getting dragged away by the bulls and we never see each other again.” Jack goes quiet, a stark comparison to his sudden rant, and brushed a hand along the side of Davey’s face. “I won’t watch you get dragged away because I was sloppy.”

Davey meets his gaze. “I’m sorry.” He whispers brokenly.

“Don’t be sorry.” Jack murmurs back. “You don’t have to be sorry for that. I don’t want you to be.”

_I love you_

_And I don’t want to_

“I wish I could keep my mouth shut.” Davey whispers into the space between them, feeling the bricks dig into his spine like dulled needles.

Jack’s head dips. “I want to be what you want me to be.” He says finally. “But I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“Losing you.” His green eyes seem pyrrhic in the watery light. “I can’t ever do that. I couldn’t live.”

“You shouldn’t ever feel guilty if I—“

Jack shakes his head, and the ludic expression that usually fills his features is gone with the wind, disappearing on a breeze. “It’s not guilt, even though I would feel it. I  can’t live without you with me, Davey. I can’t. I need you.”

Davey looks up at him, this flawless, broken boy, and whispers, “Why don’t you want to love me?”

But Jack doesn’t answer.

_The smile that you gave me_

_Even when you felt like dying_

“We have to go.” Jack whispers finally, one hand threading through Davey’s hair. Hours have past since sunset—it must be four in the morning, now.

“Do we?” Davey murmurs, looking up at him. “Couldn’t we disappear into the shadows? Find new names for ourselves among the wind and the stars?”

Jack smiles slightly, shaking his head. “We have families.”

“You’re all I need.”

“Don’t do that.” He pleads, his voice breaking. “Don’t sink to my level of adoration.”

Davey leans back. “What’s wrong with adoration?”

“It hurts things.” A wry smile. “It leaves things begging for more that you’re too afraid to give.”

“You shouldn’t.” Davey raises himself to his knees, pleading desperately. “You shouldn’t be afraid, please don’t be afraid.”

Jack’s hand brushed along his face. “I’ll always be afraid for you.” He whispers. “And maybe in our next life, we’ll be able to live without that.”

Davey wished his heart didn’t have the ability to break so many times in one night.

But he musters up the courage to smile at Jack softly, standing, and turn to the road. He’s always known how to smile through, in the end.

_We fall apart as it gets dark_

_I’m in your arms in Central Park_

Davey doesn’t know how they got to Central Park, when their silent walk back to the lodge turned into a silent walk to the middle of the city. But he knows he’s cocooned in Jack’s arms, in a cove of three trees that hides them on each side. It’s dark here, dark enough that he can’t begin to see Jack’s face.

A hot tear falls onto his shoulder, scalds him.

“Jack.” Davey whispers. His voice cracks pitifully. “Jack, why...?”

Jack shakes his head, brushes his thumb across the back of Davey’s hand where they’re twined together. “Davey,” He says. “I do.”

Davey’s heart stops. He turns in Jack’s arms, kneeling between his thighs. He thinks he can see the tears glistening on Jack’s face, but maybe it’s simply a mirage.

“You’re the most dangerous thing in my life, Davey. And it’s because you mean the world to me. Because you asked why I didn’t want to... to—“ he trails off, but Davey knows what he’s thinking. What he’s still scared to think. “But I do.”

“Jack.” Davey says, because there’s nothing else he can say. He’s not even sure what to feel. So he repeats, “Jack.”

Jack blinks at the ground. “I don’t know what to do.” He breathes desperately.

Davey looks at him, for another long moment. And then he turns in Jack’s lap and takes his wrists in his hands, wrapping Jack’s arms around his shoulders until Davey’s spine is against his chest. “You’re just going to hold me,” Davey murmurs, kisses the back of Jack’s palm. “And we’re not going to be afraid.”

Jack’s brow lands on the crown of Davey’s head, softly. “How?”

Davey turns his head to kiss the closest patch of Jack’s tanned skin in the darkness that coats them cathartically. Jack’s warmth feels like the sort of thing Davey can get irreparably lost in.

“We’ll figure it out.” He whispers.

_There’s nothing I can do or say_

_I can’t escape the way I love you_

“Davey.”

“Hmm?”

Jack’s voice breaks. “I love you.”

Davey’s heart somehow pulls itself back together from the pieces it had been in.

“We can do this.” He whispers to Jack, leaning further into that addictive warmth that he exudes. The sky to the east is lightening.

“I love you.” Jack repeats.

_I don’t want to_

_But I love you_

“I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.” Jack whispers across the centimeters between them, when they’ve finally made their way back to the lodge and are lying, twined together, on the roof. The sun is about to break over the horizon, but neither really take notice. “That sounds bad, but I didn’t. I tried not to, for a long time.”

Davey looked into his illecebrous green eyes gently. “Is it so bad?”

“No.” Jack ran his thumb across Davey’s forehead and gave a lackadaisical shrug, but his eyes are layered with emotion. “No, it’s the opposite. It feels like too much. Like I could explode every time I touch you.”

“Why do you try not to love people?” Davey whispered, almost silent, as if some wrathful deity would come crashing down on them.

Jack looked up at the ever-lightening sky, back to Davey’s face. “The people who I love always seem to fade away, somehow. Bad things happen, I guess. If I don’t love them, I can’t be upset when I’m dealt another shitty hand.” He murmured softly.

Davey reaches over to grab Jack’s hip softly, moving his other hand to twine their fingers together. He pulls close, until they’re somehow more pressed together than before, and Davey almost doesn’t know where he ends and Jack begins. They’re an interminable loop. “I won’t ever let anything take me from you, Jack. I love you.”

A dazzlingly allayed smile breaks over Jack’s curved lips. “I like hearing that.” He whispers.

Davey wishes Jack and he never had to part. It hurts not to be touching him, and even now, when every part of them is touching, it doesn’t feel like enough. “I love you.” He repeats.

Jack’s hand lands softly on the side of Davey’s face, thumb sliding and stroking his cheek until his eyes slip shut.

“I love you.” Jack whispers.

Davey smiles, turns his face to kiss Jack’s palm, feels his heart settle in his chest.

Maybe Jack didn’t mean to love him. But the only thing that Davey cares about is that he’s no longer trying not to.

Jack loves him, and they can figure out the rest as they go along.

**Author's Note:**

> it’s been proven that goats, like humans, have accents. so smile at a foreign goat, your smile is beautiful  
hope y’all enjoyed, kudos and comments??  
LOVE YOU  
<333


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